to provide for a sudden increase;
and the greatest possible care should be bestowed upon the instruction
of the special arms of the artillery and engineer troops. The militia
and volunteer system should be placed upon some tangible and effective
basis; instructors furnished them from the regular army, and all
possible means taken to spread sound military information among them.
In the vicinity of our sea-coast fortifications, it would be well to
provide a sufficient number of volunteer companies with the means of
instruction in heavy artillery, detailing officers of the regular
artillery for instructors."

On this subject of instructing our volunteers and militia in the use of
sea-coast batteries, we add the following quotation from Major Barnard's
pamphlet:--

"One of the main causes of inefficiency in coast batteries, which
has given color to the idea that they may be passed, or even _attacked_
with impunity, I conceive to be the want of _skill_ and _care_ in the
use of the guns. The result is a prodigious smoke, and a prodigious
throwing away of balls, and very little damage done. This has been,
however, by no means a _peculiarity_ of coast defences. The same system
of random firing has hitherto prevailed, both in the use of small arms
in land and of heavy ordnance in sea battles; nor has it occurred
apparently to even the greatest masters of the art of war, to ask why,
for one man wounded, or for one effective shot in a vessel's hull, so
many thousands of shot should be thrown uselessly into the air."

"But this question is _now_ asked, both in the use of the soldier's
rifled musket, and in the management of ships' guns, as well as of
artillery of all kinds."

"It is at last discovered that it is of more importance to teach the
soldier to direct his piece with accuracy of aim, than to perform
certain motions on parade with the precision of an automaton. The same
idea is now infused into all the departments of military and naval
science, and is a _necessary_ result of the recent great
improvements in the construction of arms. In short, the truth has at
last become apparent that the old-fashioned system of random firing,
though perhaps like the 'charge of the six hundred' at Balaklava, 'bien
magnifique, _n'est pas la guerre_.'"

"It is of the utmost importance that we should apply this principle
to the management